May 18 2013
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NBA Playoffs, Western Conference

West Finals Preview: Memphis Grizzlies vs. San Antonio Spurs

Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals is Sunday afternoon (330 EST, ABC) which means if I’m going to write a West Finals Preview, I’d better do it now.  To be honest, it’s much harder to write after San Antonio snuffed out Golden State’s feel-good run on Thursday night at Oracle.  The game was hanging in the balance with less than three minutes to go, but Steph Curry and Klay Thompson each had a shot go around and out, while Tony Parker and Kawhi Leonard found the bottom of the net.  A few questionable second half calls go San Antonio’s way, a few shots rim out, and that’s how little margin for error remained for Golden State.

We’ve heard about both of these teams quite often over the last two rounds, I’ll make it brief.

San Antonio has home court advantage.  San Antonio has Popovich.  San Antonio has two big men (Duncan and Spliiter).  San Antonio has one great individual wing defender who has a knack for the gargantuan offensive rebound and corner three-pointer in Kawhi Leonard.  San Antonio has one very clutch three-point shooter in Danny Green.  San Antonio never wavers, never trembles, and has been in the Western Conference Finals 8 of the last 15 years.  Yes, you may be tired of them, but no, they are not tired of you.  If Tony Parker’ (calf/ankle) is able to give them 85-90% and Manu Ginobili is able to give them the play-making he provided toward the end of the Golden State series, the Spurs should advance.

Memphis has won 8 of their last 9 games.  They’ve given up less than 94 points in 8 of their last 10 playoff games.  Their defense is suffocating, relentless, dominant, and any other word that describes a group of five men who have the utmost determination and skill in keeping the other five men on the court from going where they want to go.  Memphis has Lionel Hollins.  Memphis has the best all-around big man in the NBA, a center who can score, defend at the rim and out at the elbow, with Bill Walton-type 7-foot-passer abilities.  His name is Marc Gasol.  Zach Randolph is as good at drawing playoff fouls as any big man in the game, and has a knack for the critical offensive rebound.  Zach Randolph makes life miserable for the other team.  His arms are long, in constant motion, and wil be all over Duncan, Splitter and Leonard.  Memphis has the magnificent Mr. Steady Spectacular, Mike Conley, the ambidextrous and lightning-quick point guard who knows the pick-and-roll game as well as anyone in the league.  Memphis has surprisingly good bench contributors in Bayless and Pondexter.  Memphis has the best one-on-one perimeter defender in the league in Tony Allen.  That’s a lot of things for one team to have.  An embarrassment of riches, really.  They would have beaten the Clippers if Blake Griffin were healthy.  They would have beaten Oklahoma City if Russell Westbrook were healthy.  Yes, they would have.  Probably.  Was it a bit easier without either Griffin or Westbrook?  Yes.

 

Darko Index Predicts: Memphis in 7.

 

In what might be the most evenly-matched conference finals in recent memory, the slight edge goes to Memphis because of age and health.  The possibility that Duncan (limited minutes), Splitter (recovering ankle), Ginobili (age/hamstring), or Parker (calf/ankle) can’t give the Spurs everything they are each capable of, that possibility gives San Antonio little margin for error.  Memphis is healthier.  Randolph is playing through ankle issues himself, but everyone else appears healthy, which is pretty remarkable for mid-May.

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May 17 2013
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Eastern Conference, Western Conference, NBA Playoffs

The Playoffs in One Word: Attrition

There are  five teams left in the 2013 NBA Playoffs, as of Friday, May 17th.  I’d like to write “four,” but the New York Knicks had to save face by winning at MSG last night, and will live to see Game 6 in Indianapolis on Saturday night.  More than any other year I can recall, this year’s NBA Playoffs are about one word: attrition.  We hear cliches about how teams or players are always “fighting through injuries,” using “no excuses.”  Doc Rivers likes to say, “Nobody is healthy at this point” about playoff basketball, which brings us to one word: attrition.

attrition – noun
the good people at Merriam-Webster.com give us a sense of the word’s origin as well as how it is used today.
In Middle English, the word attricioun meant sorrow for one’s sins that arises from a motive other than that of the love of God.  The later definitions are the ones that apply to the way in which several of this year’s playoff teams have simple run out of energy (gas or steam, if you like):
: the act of rubbing together :friction; also: the act of wearing or grinding down by friction
: the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack <a war of attrition>
: a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death <a company with a high rate of attrition>
There are five teams remaining in this year’s playoffs: Miami, Indiana, New York in the Eastern Conference.  San Antonio and Memphis in the Western Conference.
Of the eleven that have been relieved of their playoff duties, the following fall under the category of “attrition” teams because of a) injury; b) being ground down by the physicality or defensive intensity of their opponent or c) retirement.  Actually, nobody retired in the middle of the playoffs, so reasons “a” and “b” are the only two I can think of.

Attrition: Yes or No?

Milwaukee Bucks – nope.  A mediocre team that relied on undersized offense (Ellis and Jennings) and one or two very good individual defenders (Sanders, Udoh, Mbah a Moute)

Boston Celtics – yes.  A resilient team that limped into the playoffs (Garnett and Pierce) without its facilitator (Rondo) and the best rookie rebounder they’ve seen in a while (Sullinger), the Celtics fought hard before bowing out in 6.  Players that defined this year’s battle through their own recovery from injury and will help define the future in Boston: Avery Bradley and Jeff Green.

Atlanta Hawks – yes, kind of.  Losing Louis Williams early in the year had a significant impact on the offense, and potentially kept them from being a 4th or 5th seed.  Indiana’s defense certainly ground them into the kind of pulp you don’t want in your orange juice.

Chicago Bulls – yes.  As has been expounded upon at length, the Bulls had a fighting spirit that could not be denied.  Credit to the entire system, the coaching staff, Thibodeau, but also players 1-12 for buying into the defensive schemes.  The Bulls rode Joakim Noah, Jimmy Butler, Nate Robinson, Carlos Boozer and Marco Belinelli as far as they could.  And that was farther than most expected.  They made do all year without Rose, but without Hinrich and Deng, they somehow continued to test Miami in 4 of their 5 games.

Brooklyn Nets – nope.  Lacked the necessary ingredients to win in the playoffs: cohesion, defense, understanding of roles, and coaching.  Nice and shiny no arena, but they collapsed when faced with their biggest test.

—

Los Angeles Lakers – yes/no.  Yes in the sense that injuries throughout the year, some predictable (Howard coming off of back surgery and Nash’s age), some less predictable (Kobe’s achilles) depleted them.  No in the sense that for the first 65 games of the season, the team had zero fight in them, weren’t well-coached, didn’t buy into the system, and beat only the lesser teams in the league through talent and Kobe’s determination/selfishness alone.

Houston Rockets - yes, in a sense.  Kevin McHale was grieving throughout this season, as his daughter, Sasha, died in November of an auto-immune disease.  The Rockets were not known as a defensive team, played a chaotic but successful brand of open court basketball this year, reinvented themselves on the fly after they traded for Harden.  In a sense, their season was born out of these big events.  The team, with a new superstar scorer and a new rebounding/defensive force (Asik) rallied around its coach.  The determined play of global travelling point guard Patrick Beverley helped keep the Rockets within striking distance of OKC.

Golden State Warriors - yes.  Stephen Curry and Andrew Bogut, the team’s offensive and defensive leaders, helped Golden State surprise Denver and San Antonio (at least for the first four games, until that awful attrition thing hit) in April and May.  The Warriors were the epitome of a team, playing unselfish, free-flowing, offensive basketball on one end and holding opponents to forced jumpers and shot-clock-aware possessions on the other end.

In the end, the Spurs exploited the Warriors weaknesses in ways that Denver never could: forcing the ball out of Curry’s hands, while making Steph work to recover, by closing out at the 3-point line on his injured ankle, eventually running Thompson out of his comfort zone (corner 3′s and long-wing jumpers) and making Harrison Barnes and Jarrett Jack the play-makers.  Bogut, who fought through the nagging ankle pain against Denver and the Spurs, could barely move by Games 5 and 6.

Los Angeles Clippers - no.  Yes, Blake Griffin’s accidental ankle-injury played a small part in the Clippers losses in Games 5 and 6 to Memphis.  However, they were basically a healthy team that couldn’t figure out how to score against the Western Conference’s most stifling defense.  Blame Del Negro’s lack of a system as well as the lack of  a post-game in the aftermath of Griffin’s ankle.  The bench was the Clippers strength all year.  In the playoffs, they were neutralized.

Denver Nuggets – kind of.  Yes, Kenneth Faried was less than 100% for the first 3 games of this series, and yes, Kenneth Faried absolutely dominated Golden State in the regular season on the glass.  Yes, losing Danilo Gallinari to a season-ending ACL tear was a problem.  In his absence, Wilson Chandler’s playoff performance paralleled his entire career: moments of greatness thrown in with huge stretches of lackluster energy and uneven shooting.  Andre Miller’s 18-point 4th quarter in Game 1 proved as unsustainable as it seemed at the time.  Stephen Curry got whatever he wanted against Denver.  That becomes clearer when you consider how San Antonio adjusted.  Kawhi Leonard is one of the league’s best at intercepting cross-court passes with those out-stretched arms.  Those assists to Thompson in round one became turnovers in round two.

Oklahoma City – yes.  Russell Westbrook’s knee.  You’ve probably read enough about how that one changed the playoff picture in the West.

—
Jonah Hall has survived various obstacles in his writing career, such as paper cuts, stinging red eyes from lack of sleep, and a broken pinkie and thumb when he was in his early teenage years.  Fortunately for Jonah, he has stayed relatively healthy in his amateur sporting life.  A minor nagging knee injury here.  A cramping calf there.  Nothing major, knock on wood.
Contact Jonah at darkoindex@gmail.com and darkoindex on twitter, especially if you want links to new posts.

 

 

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May 16 2013
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Boston Celtics, Fandom, Golden State Warriors, NBA Playoffs

And Ode to Game 6: Preparing to Roar at Oracle

The lungs, they are ready…despite all that phlegm.

The voices will shout….encourage young men.

The year has been long…and short just the same.

My Celtics are gone…yet my Warriors remain.

 

No Truth, No Big Ticket…

That Era may end.

A Human Torch (Curry) and The Kindling (Thompson),

A shiver they’ll send.

 

The Spurs and their Pop, with Parker’s spinning drives.

The real gem they’ve discovered, a man named Kawhi (Ka-WHY).

The Big Fundamental and the old Euro-stepper,

Manu and Duncan: familiar as salt paired with pepper.

 

Mark Jackson may know the power of positive thinking,

But without Bogut and Jack, that ship will be sinking.

This time of year, its so fun and exhausting.

School ending is the cake; playoffs, the frosting.

 

—-

 

Jonah Hall and his Ladybug will be roaring for a team other than the Boston Celtics tonight, from the balcony of Oracle Arena, in Oakland, California.  The anticipation is strange.  The Warriors will never replace the Celtics in their hearts.  Yet, the heart has room for two basketball teams now.  

Contact Jonah at  darkoindex@gmail.com.

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